Beloved

139 minutes

Characters traipse around city streets singing 60s-style pop tunes in this ungainly, overconceived musical (2011), which begins as an exercise in Jacques Demy-style romance but keeps accumulating ideas and incident until it buckles under its own weight. A French shopgirl in Prague (Ludivine Sagnier) takes up prostitution and nabs herself a doctor (Rasha Bukvic) for a husband; decades later the couple (now played by Catherine Deneuve and Milos Forman) have separated, and their grown child (Chiara Mastroianni, Deneuve’s real-life daughter) puzzles out a love affair with an American rock drummer (Paul Schneider) who has AIDS. The musical numbers are passable at best and alternate with a jarringly modern string score by Alex Beaupain, the friction between them typical of a movie that wants it every which way. Christophe Honore (Making Plans for Lena) directed his own script. In English and subtitled French and Czech.
ByJ.R. Jones